What Does Paper Do for Your Minecraft Server?

If you’ve ever run a Minecraft server, you’ve probably come across terms like Bukkit, Spigot or Paper. Paper is free server software for the Java Edition that lets you use plugins and runs faster than Mojang’s official server.

In short: As of October 2026, Paper is the standard software for plugin servers. According to the statistics site bStats, around 74% of all tracked plugin servers run Paper. The current version supports Minecraft Java 26.3 (released September 15, 2026) and needs Java 25. Paper is faster than Vanilla, fixes many bugs, runs almost all Spigot plugins and takes just a few clicks to install.

What is Paper?

Paper is developed by the PaperMC team, a group of volunteer programmers. Originally, Paper was a fork of Spigot: it took Spigot’s code and added its own improvements on top. In December 2024, PaperMC announced it would split from Spigot starting with Minecraft 1.21.4 (a “hard fork”). Since then, Paper has been an independent project that can support new Minecraft versions faster – sometimes even as test builds before the official release.

For you as a server owner, not much has changed: the familiar config files bukkit.yml and spigot.yml still work, and plugins for Spigot also run on Paper.

Paper, Vanilla and Spigot compared

What Paper does better

• More performance: Paper contains many optimizations and offers extra tuning options, for example for chunks, hoppers and redstone. According to the hard-fork announcement, Paper already carried almost 1,600 changes of its own on top of Spigot by the end of 2024.
• Bugs fixed: Paper removes well-known bugs and exploits from Vanilla, such as duplicating TNT, carpets and rails with pistons. If you need tricks like that for farms, you can re-enable them in config/paper-global.yml under unsupported-settings – at your own risk.
• Built-in Anti-Xray: Paper can hide ores from X-ray cheats. It’s off by default and can be turned on in config/paper-world-defaults.yml under anticheat → anti-xray. You can read more about protecting your server from cheaters in How to Download and Install an Anti-Cheat Plugin.
• Built-in lag hunting: Since Minecraft 1.21, Paper ships with the spark profiler. /spark profiler start --timeout 600 measures for ten minutes and gives you a link to a report showing which plugin or farm is slowing the server down.
• Lots of settings: In config/paper-global.yml (for the whole server) and config/paper-world-defaults.yml (for all worlds) you can adjust things Vanilla doesn’t offer.
• Its own plugin portal: Hangar is PaperMC’s official plugin portal.

Are there any downsides?

• Small differences from the original: Because Paper fixes bugs, some technical farms or redstone builds that rely on Vanilla quirks work differently or not at all. If you play a lot of technical Minecraft, check the settings or stick with Vanilla or Fabric.
• No mods: Paper is made for plugins. Mods with new blocks or creatures need Fabric or NeoForge.
• Paper plugins don’t run on Spigot: plugins that use the Paper API only work on Paper and software built on it, such as Purpur.

How to install Paper – step by step

1. Install Java 25
   Paper for Minecraft 26.x needs at least Java 25. Free packages are available from Adoptium (Temurin), for example. Then check in the terminal with java -version that version 25 is shown.
2. Download Paper
   Open papermc.io/downloads/paper, choose the Minecraft version and download the latest build (mid-October 2026: build 190 for 26.3). Put the file into its own empty folder.
3. Start the server for the first time
   Open a terminal in that folder and start the server with java -Xms4G -Xmx4G -jar paper.jar --nogui (adjust the file name). -Xms and -Xmx set how much memory the server may use – 2 to 4 GB is enough for a few friends. The Paper website also has a generator for ready-made startup scripts.
4. Accept the EULA
   On the first start, the server stops and creates the file eula.txt. Open it and change eula=false to eula=true. This means you accept Mojang’s terms of use. For kids, a parent should do this step.
5. Start again and connect
   Start the server again. Now the world, server.properties and the config/ folder are created. In Minecraft, go to “Multiplayer” and connect to localhost if the server runs on the same PC.
6. Add plugins
   Stop the server with stop, put plugin files (.jar) into the plugins/ folder and restart. Which plugins are worth it is covered in Plugins and Mods for Your Minecraft Server.

Updates: To update, simply swap the .jar file for a newer build. Before moving to a new Minecraft version, make a backup and check whether your plugins are ready for it.

Don’t want to run a server on your own PC? Many hosts offer Paper with one click – you’ll find an overview in Minecraft Server Hosting Compared and in Free Minecraft Servers.

Purpur, Folia and Velocity – the Paper family

• Purpur is built on Paper and, by its own description, aims to offer as many configuration options as possible. Plugins for Bukkit, Spigot and Paper run on it. According to bStats, around 9% of plugin servers use Purpur.
• Folia is a Paper variant for very large servers. It spreads the world across several CPU cores, but many plugins don’t run on it. For a server with friends, Folia isn’t worth it.
• Velocity is a proxy from PaperMC that connects several servers into a network – for example a lobby, a survival server and a minigame server.

Tips for parents

• Your own Paper server is a good way for kids to play only with friends you know. Turn on the whitelist for that (/whitelist on, then /whitelist add <name>).
• Don’t leave the server reachable from the internet without supervision while no whitelist is active. For playing on your home network, you don’t need to change anything on your router.
• Plugins have full access to the computer. Only download them from Hangar, Modrinth, SpigotMC or the project page.
• Does someone play on a phone, tablet or console? With the Geyser plugin, Bedrock players can join the Paper server too. We explain the differences between the two editions in Minecraft Bedrock vs. Java Edition.

Frequently asked questions

Is Paper free?

Yes. Paper is free and open source. You download the server file directly from papermc.io, and you don’t need an account.

Which Java version does Paper need?

Paper for Minecraft 26.x needs at least Java 25. For older versions: 1.20 to 1.21.11 run on Java 21, and 1.17 to 1.19 on Java 17.

Do Spigot plugins work on Paper?

Yes, almost all Bukkit and Spigot plugins also run on Paper. Paper has been an independent project since Minecraft 1.21.4, but it keeps supporting the existing Spigot API. It doesn’t work the other way round: plugins written only for Paper don’t run on Spigot.

Can I switch my Vanilla or Spigot server to Paper?

Yes. According to PaperMC, Paper is a drop-in replacement for Spigot and CraftBukkit, so you can keep your world and plugins. Paper also takes over Vanilla worlds automatically. Make a backup first anyway, because going back to Vanilla isn’t straightforward.

What’s the difference between Paper, Purpur and Folia?

Paper is the standard for plugin servers. Purpur is built on Paper and offers lots of extra gameplay settings. Folia is a Paper variant for very large servers that spreads the world across several CPU cores – but many plugins don’t run on it.

Conclusion

If you want to run a Minecraft server with plugins, there’s hardly any way around Paper in 2026: it’s free, quick to set up, runs almost all Bukkit and Spigot plugins and comes with useful tools like spark and Anti-Xray built in. Only if you depend on exact Vanilla behavior for technical farms or want to use mods are you better off with Vanilla or Fabric.

Transparency & sources

Version, build and Java requirement: PaperMC downloads and the PaperMC download API, plus the PaperMC documentation “Getting started” (accessed October 15, 2026).
Hard fork: “The future of Paper – Hard fork” (December 13, 2024).
Features: Anti-Xray, world configuration, profiling with spark.
Adoption: bStats – global statistics.